A Cross-cultural Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Imperative Sentences

Both in English and Chinese language, imperative sentences are widely used inspeaking to express the addressor’s intention to ask the addressee to do or not to dosomething. Although a large number of scholars have done research on English andChinese imperatives, yet contrastive studies between them are not many, and most of themare done from linguistic point of view, with few researches being done from culturalperspective. In this paper, English and Chinese imperatives are studied and compared fromthe angle of intercultural communication, which would contribute to improve theunderstanding of English and Chinese imperatives and reduce the mistakes in the using ofimperatives, thus enhancing efficiency of communication. Meanwhile, it also provides anew perspective for the study of English and Chinese imperatives.For the purpose of making intercultural comparison, in this paper, two famousdramas The Iceman Cometh and Teahouse are selected as research texts. The study aimsto find out answers for three questions, namely, what are the differences in the quantity ofEnglish and Chinese imperatives? What are the differences in the usage of English andChinese imperatives? And how do cultural factors influences the use of imperatives.Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Theory is used as theory foundation in this paper. Textanalysis and contrastive analysis are used to analyze and compare the two works. In theresearch, the author first makes a comprehensive study of the imperatives in the twoworks, and finds out the patterns and characteristics of them. Then contrastive study isdone and the cultural roots are explored.Through contrastive analysis, three findings are concluded: in the first place,imperatives are used more in Chinese than in English, which reflects that Chinese peopleare more likely to use imperatives to convey intention; secondly, the imperatives spokenby people with different status show different characteristics between English andChinese language; lastly, three cultural dimensions, which are individualism versuscollectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation versus short-termorientation play a key role in the use of imperatives.